Almost every day now brings a fresh insult to decent people. Today’s is the way former General Workers Union boss Tony Zarb is decorated with Malta’s highest honour. No doubt there are other disturbing choices on today’s honours list, but when I wrote this yesterday evening, Zarb’s name was the only one that had been revealed. He has been decorated even though the matter of how and why he leased out parts of the General Workers Union premises to third parties, for a hefty profit to the union, when this violates the terms and conditions under which the union holds the building, remains unresolved. Standards have slipped to rock bottom, so the government has brought out its rock-breaking equipment to go down further still.

The President of the Chamber of Commerce met with the Opposition leader a couple of days ago and expressed his concern about the reports every day in the press about poor management of public funds, bad decisions, conflicts of interest and similar matters related to the business of government. He described the situation as a “race to the bottom”. The Opposition leader agreed with him, as well he might.

It’s a shame, then, that the Chamber of Commerce has gone into business with this government, because now it has found that its business partner is racing to the bottom. Trade Malta was incorporated last March; the government holds 51 per cent of the shares and the Chamber of Commerce the remaining 49 per cent. The day the news was announced, I wrote: “I almost give up on this country. In areas where there should be cooperation and collaboration, there is none. And in areas where there should be autonomy and a clear separation of powers and interests, organisations, individuals and authorities jump into bed with each other.”

The Malta Chamber of Commerce exists for the specific purpose of safeguarding its members’ interests. Because of the nature of those interests, the entity against which it is most likely to need to safeguard them is the government. Now, under the Taghna Lkoll stewardship of David Curmi – last seen in public sitting next to the Prime Minister to back his scheme for selling Maltese passports – the Chamber of Commerce has jumped into bed with the government.

If the Chamber of Commerce and Industry feels a pressing need to help its members open up export markets – which is, indeed, one of its purposes – then it should galvanise its members and some of their funds and do so under its own steam, preserving its autonomy. As for the government, it has Malta Enterprise to promote exports and shouldn’t have a clashing organisation called Trade Malta, unless it has resigned itself to a fact I know through direct experience: that Malta Enterprise CEO Mario Vella is a lazy and useless man who hasn’t worked effectively since leaving the Red Hyper Communist Stasi University of East Berlin at the height of the Cold War.

Fortunately, David Curmi is no longer president of the Chamber of Commerce, but the damage caused by his Taghna Lkoll behaviour has been done. The sight of him sitting next to the Prime Minister to back the sale of Maltese citizenship, at the height of the controversy, was extremely bad for the Chamber’s image and very ill-judged in other respects. It helped reassure Muscat that he can do as he pleases and that was the start of the race to the bottom. It has become so much worse precisely because he was allowed to get away with so much since then. If the Chamber of Commerce, that august institution, wishes to redeem itself and help slow that race to the bottom – with Labour you can’t halt it completely except by booting them out of power – then it should get its act together and release hard-hitting statements on all those unsettling matters which its officials read about in the newspapers every day.

The Nationalist Party has called for the Prime Minister to sack his man Ian Borg, and has asked him, rhetorically, what he is waiting for. Well, he’s waiting for us to forget about the matter, just like we forgot about Michael Falzon and that business with Mark Gaffarena. Muscat has made it clear to us already what his resignation and removal threshold is: your driver has to go on a rampage in your official car with GM plates attached, shooting at other people and their cars on a public road. All else is fine. And do you know, I don’t think Muscat replaced his Police Minister because of that shoot-out. I think he replaced him because of the embarrassment and mockery caused by the leaked recordings of those infamous telephone conversations. The pizza delivery spoof call was probably the final straw. If those conversations had not been leaked, and if the entire country hadn’t listened to them, fascinated by the absurdity and bizarre behaviour, Mallia would still be Police Minister today.

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